BOMBING
AND BIGOTRY:
The
Wars Abroad, the Wars at Home
Martin
Luther King: “The
bombs that are falling [overseas] are exploding in our cities”
BPD
Petitions - Please Sign & Share!
Many of you have
already signed the ACLU petition to the BPD calling for three key reforms. The
petition is now online here: End Racially Discriminatory Police Practices in Boston (for
residents of Boston) and Support the Movement to End Racially Discriminatory Police
Practices in Boston (for people who aren’t residents of Boston).
We encourage you to
please sign one of these two petitions and share widely among friends and
supporters!
THE
MAKING OF FERGUSON
Long
before the shooting of Michael Brown, official racial-isolation policies primed
Ferguson for this summer’s events… Although policies to impose segregation are
no longer explicit, their effect endures. When we blame private prejudice and
snobbishness for contemporary segregation, we not only whitewash history but
avoid considering whether new policies might instead promote an integrated
community… Polluting industry, taverns, liquor stores, nightclubs, and houses of
prostitution were permitted in black neighborhoods but violated zoning rules
elsewhere. More
Police
in Ferguson committed human rights abuses: Amnesty International
The
Amnesty International report said law enforcement officers should be
investigated by U.S. authorities for the abuses, which occurred during weeks of
racially charged protests that erupted after white Ferguson police officer
Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, 18, on Aug. 9…
The report also criticizes a Missouri law that the group said may be
unconstitutional because it allows police to use deadly force against someone
even if there is no imminent threat of harm. The report calls on state
lawmakers to make Missouri law comply with international standards making lethal
force by police a last resort, said Rachel Ward, director of research at Amnesty
International. More
These
days, two “wars” are in the headlines: one against the marauding Islamic State and its new caliphate
of terror carved out of parts of Iraq and Syria, the other
against a marauding disease and potential pandemic, Ebola, spreading across West
Africa, with the first cases already reaching the United States and Europe.
Both wars seemed to come out of the blue; both were unpredicted by our vast
national security apparatus; both have induced fears bordering on hysteria and, in both cases, those fears have been quickly stirred into the political stew of an American
election year… Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised then that, while President
Obama was sending at least 1,600 military personnel (and the drones and bombers) to fight
ISIS, his first response to the Ebola crisis was also to send 3,000 troops into
Liberia in what the media has been calling an “Ebola surge” (a reflexive nod to the American troop “surge” in
Iraq in 2007). More
Ebola
Fears Turn Into an Epidemic of Racism and Hysteria
Thus
far, there have been just eight confirmed cases of Ebola in the United States following an outbreak in
West Africa. Far more contagious here has been a new virus of hysteria — and of
the sort of ignorant discrimination that immigrants in general and Africans
specifically have endured for decades… More worrisome than grassroots Ebola
hysteria are the calls for official national security policies rooted in the
same sort of ignorance. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Michigan) is among those in favor of
a ban on travel to and from countries stricken with Ebola outbreaks. “No, you’re
not coming here, not until this situation is solved in Africa ,” Upton said recently. “We should not be allowing these folks in,
period.” Talk-show host and noted icon of religious tolerance Bill Maher has also thrown his support behind the idea of national quarantines.
More
Ebola’s
grim original secret: How capitalism and obscene military spending got us here
Missing
from the wall-to-wall coverage of the global Ebola crisis is a root-cause
analysis that shows how unfettered free market global capitalism and our obscene
spending on the military both play a part in creating the environment for this
latest outbreak and the ones that are sure to follow. Annually the world spends
more than $1.7 trillion on the military. According to the Wall Street Journal
the world spends a whopping $27 billion on the world’s public health. Keep that
obscene imbalance in your mind the next time you see pictures of Liberians
bleeding out in the street. No missile killed them, but our greed and global
death-oriented spending priorities have left fingerprints on all these bodies.
More
Pentagon
plans Ebola domestic-response team of medical experts to aid
doctors
The
Pentagon announced Sunday that it will create a 30-person team of medical
experts that could quickly leap into a region if new Ebola cases emerge in the United States, providing support for
civilian doctors who lack proficiency in fighting the deadly virus… Despite the
apparent control health officials have over Ebola’s spread, military officials
decided to take no chances and are now constructing the equivalent of a medial
SWAT team. Five military doctors, five trainers and 20 nurses will begin
training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio within the next week, according to
Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon’s spokesman. More
Don’t
Ask the Pentagon Where Its Money Goes: It won't tell
Every
taxpayer, business, and government agency in America is supposed to be able to
pass a financial audit by the feds, every year. It’s the law, so we do our duty.
There’s one exception: the Pentagon. Year after year, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) declares the Pentagon
budget to be un-auditable. In 2013, for example, the GAO found that the Pentagon consistently fails to control
its costs, measure its performance, or prevent and detect fraud, waste, and
abuse. Congress thankfully, did give the Pentagon a deadline to get itself in
better financial shape – 25 years ago. Taxpayers are still waiting.
More
Time
to reduce economic dependence on Pentagon spending
The
Pentagon’s base budget has come down a modest 10 percent since its peak in
2010. This isn’t much compared to other post-World War II builddowns, but it
has been enough to cause economic disruption in key cities and states… Given
this reality, it makes sense for defense dependent areas to devise plans to
diversify their local economies now, before more shifts in Pentagon spending
leave them with few viable alternatives. A more diversified local economy is
better in any case, since it shields communities from the inevitable ups and
downs of Pentagon contracting. And economic development specialists agree that
it is far better to plan before a crisis hits than try to scramble at the last
moment when a key program is reduced or scaled back. More
KRUGMAN:
Plutocrats Against Democracy
…the
political right has always been uncomfortable with democracy. No matter how well
conservatives do in elections, no matter how thoroughly free-market ideology
dominates discourse, there is always an undercurrent of fear that the great
unwashed will vote in left-wingers who will tax the rich, hand out largess to
the poor, and destroy the economy… And now you understand why there’s so much
furor on the right over the alleged but actually almost nonexistent problem of
voter fraud, and so much support for voter ID laws that make it hard for the
poor and even the working class to cast ballots. American politicians don’t dare
say outright that only the wealthy should have political rights — at least not
yet. But if you follow the currents of thought now prevalent on the political
right to their logical conclusion, that’s where you end up. The truth is that a
lot of what’s going on in American politics is, at root, a fight between
democracy and plutocracy. And it’s by no means clear which side will win.
More
Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Texas' New Voter ID Law Is Racist
It
is not the only voting rights litigation that will affect who can vote in the
midterm elections this fall. There is Georgia’s refusal to process more than
50,000 voter registrations from a minority voter drive. But as Ginsburg’s
blistering 7-page dissent made clear, the fight over Texas’s voter ID law is in
a class by itself. That’s because a lower federal court held a trial and found
that the law’s intent was to discriminate and disenfranchise, calling it a “poll
tax,” and then that record was ignored by higher federal appeals
courts—including the Supreme Court. More
The
Disgust Election
This
year, the Koch brothers and their extensions — just to name one lonely voice in
the public realm — have operations in at least 35 states, and will spend
somewhere north of $120 million to ensure a Congress that will do their bidding.
Spending by outside groups has gone to $1 billion in 2012 from $52 million in
2000. And it gets worse. At the same time that this court has handed over
elections to people who already have enormous power, they’ve given approval to
efforts to keep the powerless from voting. In Texas, Republicans have passed a
selective voter ID bill that could keep upward of 600,000 citizens — students,
Native Americans in federally recognized tribes, the elderly — from having a say
in this election… We Americans have long boasted of having free and fair
elections. Thanks to this Supreme Court, they are neither. More
The first-ever Fair Food label went national
Friday marking the latest milestone in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’
two-decade-long journey to improve the lives of Florida farmworkers.
